FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

it. He had done as much as he could. He had taken the business as far as he could take it, and now he was starting to let go. He didn’t want to hand over just yet – that wouldn’t happen for a few years – but from that moment, I knew that it would be up to me. And I didn’t know if I was ready for it or not. Of course, he was wrong about the spread rates. As I was about to learn, you need to know an awful lot more than the spread rates in order to run a successful business. For one thing, you can’t leave an empty space at the centre where the boss should be – and with Dad away, there was a big hole, and I would have to fill it. Although I didn’t know it yet, things were already going wrong, and within a year the business would be on its knees. But that’s the way of it. It’s always darkest just before the dawn. I had been thrown in at the deep end. I had a lot to learn, and I would have to learn it quickly. But those are the lessons that stick with you. They make you what you are, and they make the business what it is today. This book is the story of the journey that the business made from its early days – a man, a lorry, and some shovels – to the award-winning company that we know today. Or rather, it’s the story of the first part of that journey, because – as anyone who works for F.M. Conway Ltd. will tell you – our journey is only just beginning.

Well, things had been quiet for about a month, so I was in the office when Dad came in one day waving a bit of paper. He put it down on the desk in front of me. The paper had a whole lot of figures on it. ‘What’s that?’ I asked. ‘They’re the spread rates, son,’ he said. The spread rates told you the area you could cover with a given volume of material. If you laid base course 1½ inches thick, you’d get so many square yards out of it; if you laid wearing course ¾ inch thick, you’d get another load of square yards out of it. And so on. ‘The spread rates?’ ‘Yes. That’s how you run this business. It’s all you need. I’m off.’ ‘Off where?’ ‘Ireland,’ he said. And he walked out. • It wasn’t the first time he had walked out. He had been doing it on and off for some months now. But this time, I had the feeling that he meant it. A couple of years before, Dad had bought a plot of land in County Cork, where he was building a bungalow. The bungalow was nearly finished, and it was taking up more and more of his time. In addition to that, it was clear that Dad’s health was taking a turn for the worse. The business hadn’t been going very well. There had been one particularly exhausting project, and it had taken a lot out of him. After that, his heart was no longer in

xi